Here is someone working for the ABC, from a Labor background as Hawke’s press secretary, who has written about the rise and fall of a Labor Prime Minister with all the distortions and omissions worthy of the most disingenuous right wing hack.

Costello said on Monday night that Turnbull has had a far easier ride than Nelson, but this blog is now not so sure. There seems no other way to explain the Liberals’ extraordinary behaviour over the last few days.

So by the end we got to the real nature of Costello’s ‘pretensions’ to the leadership, less about his ambitions than about a media and a political party refusing to face the vacuum in front of their eyes.

Treasury’s unusual move in projecting growth at a higher trend and for a longer forward projection is necessary to provide a guide path out of the downturn that does not come from the economic programs of the political class.